84 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



him, and was obliged to fetch him several raps 

 over the head with my hook, which brought him 

 sprawling, clams and all, to the ground, and I had 

 a great to - do before I could kill him. Mottly 

 Simmonds, a shepherd's boy that I once knew, put 

 a long bit of string with a running knot to it round 

 a buzzard's nest that he'd found in the hawth upon 

 Norton Top, and when he saw her a-coming he got 

 ready, and as soon as she was settled he pulled the 

 string and catched her round both legs." 



Old men of eighty or more who have shepherded 

 on these downs may still remember when buzzards 

 occasionally built their nests on a hawth or furze 

 bush ; to others it sounds like a story of ancient 

 times, a picture of wild-bird life of the days when 

 great bustards roamed in flocks on the downs and 

 white spoonbills nested on the trees of West Dean, 

 near Chichester. 



The extermination of the black grouse is even 

 more recent. The Rev. Edward Turner, in a paper 

 printed in the Sussex Archoeological Collections, vol. 

 xiv. p. 62, writes as follows: "Ashdown Forest was 

 well stocked with black game. So numerous were 

 these birds at the commencement of the present 

 century that it was hardly possible to ride or walk 

 about it in any direction without disturbing some of 

 them. At that time the forest was thickly covered 

 with heath, but since then this has been so generally 

 cut and carried away that the black game, deprived 



